I rose.  “Well, I have to be going.  But I’ll drop round now and then, and see what success you have.”

She became suddenly important.  “Maybe I won’t tell!”

To which I answered, indifferently, “All right, it’s your secret.”  But I went off without much worry over that part of it.  Claire must have some one to whom to recount her troubles—­or her triumphs, as the case might be.

29.  I had my talk with Sylvia a day or two later, and made my excuse—­a friend from the West who had been going out of town in a few hours later.

The seed had been growing, I found.  Ever since we had last met, her life had consisted of arguments over the costume-ball on which her husband had set his heart, and at which she had refused to play the hostess.

“Of course, he’s right about one thing,” she remarked.  “We can’t stay in New York unless we give some big affair.  Everyone expects it, and there is no explanation except one he could not offer.”

“I’ve made a big breach in your life, Sylvia,” I said.

“It wasn’t all you.  This unhappiness has been in me—­it’s been like a boil, and you’ve been the poultice.” (She had four younger brothers and sisters, so these domestic similes came naturally.)

“Boils,” I remarked, “are disfiguring, when they come to a head.”

There was a pause.  “How is your child-labour bill?” she asked, abruptly.

“Why, it’s all right.”

“Didn’t I see a letter in the paper saying it had been referred to a sub-committee, some trick to suppress it for this session?”

I could not answer.  I had been hoping she had not seen that letter.

“If I were to come forward now,” she said, “I could possibly block that move, couldn’t I?”

Still I said nothing.

“If I were to take a bold stand—­I mean if I were to speak at a public meeting, and denounce the move.”

“I suppose you could,” I had to admit.

For a long time she sat with her head bowed.  “The children will have to wait,” she said, at last, half to herself.

“My dear,” I answered (What else was there to answer?) “the children have waited a long time.”

“I hate to turn back—­to have you say I’m a coward—­”

“I won’t say that, Sylvia.”

“You will be too kind, no doubt, but that will be the truth.”

I tried to reassure her.  But the acids I had used—­intended for tougher skins than hers—­had burned into the very bone, and now it was not possible to stop their action.  “I must make you understand,” she said, “how serious a thing it seems to me for a wife to stand out against her husband.  I’ve been brought up to feel that it was the most terrible thing a woman could do.”